February 13, 2009

Justice Ginsburg Home From Hospital

The Supreme Court has just issued a health update on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, eight days after the initial announcement that she had undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer. The news overall appears good, indicating that her disease has been caught early before any spread to other organs. She is now recuperating at home. Her plan to return to the bench when the Court comes back in session on Feb. 23 appears unchanged. Here is the text of the Court announcement:

"The pancreatic cancer for which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery on February 5 has been determined as TNM Stage 1 by doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. All lymph nodes proved negative for cancer and no metastasis was found.In the procedure Dr. Murray Brennan, the attending pancreatic surgeon, removed the Justice’s spleen along with a portion of her pancreas.

"Extraordinarily, the approximately 1 cm lesion revealed on a late January CAT scan, the discovery of which led to the February 5 surgery, proved benign.But in searching the entire pancreas Dr. Brennan identified a previously undetected single, even smaller, tumor which upon examination was found malignant. Justice Ginsburg was released from Memorial Sloan-Kettering today and is recuperating at home."